...two adults, two kids, and all their stuff wandering the world. (Plus two in college.)

Friday, August 25, 2006

(mis)Adventures in Packing

How is it possible to be so tired after two days of -not- packing a single box?

Can it be the move off our own bed to the queen in the tv room? Can it be the absence of mosquito netting, allowing more bites last night than in the months previous? The not so comfy sheets from the welcome kit? The echo in the halls? The midnight and later nights of last minute suitcase packing and junk purging? The stress of hating moves all together?All of the above?Yeah, I think so too.Maybe it was also from having packers in the house two days straight. And finding boxes' worth of items overlooked after the packing was done. Oh no, we dragged it all out and said pack it anyway! The giant roasting pot, the set of glass mixing bowls (ok, they're see through, I can see how they were overlooked), the pizza stone, the picnic cooler. The bigger chuckle came from the items that weren't supposed to be packed, like the big mosquito net frame over our bed. It looks just like the four over the kids' beds, and those didn't get packed up. Or how about when they went into the bathroom in the dark, unused corner of the house where the door was shut and everything in the room was in -suitcases-. Yeah, they started wrapping our suitcases, the ones I thought I'd hidden. I told Ian we should have put them in the walk-in closet and locked the door! Thank goodness he caught it in time and neither our passports nor our undies disappeared into the back of the truck.One of the supervisors asked where our dog was. He wanted to adopt her. Um.... The vet came on Wednesday and packed her and her things into the back of a taxi to bring to her new home. She was less than thrilled at that idea, I'm sure she had flashbacks to the last time she was tossed into the back of a taxi. I just hope she didn't jump out the windows that that were permanently rolled open. I didn't take pictures though I wish I had for the sheer silliness and sadness of it all. The kids have taken it well, much better than the loss of the cats. Thursday we played with sidewalk chalk and realized how much more peaceful it is outside while swimming, riding bikes, getting laundry, even just going in and out of the house. Even so, I hope Sable is happy and safe.Now, without a TV to while away our hours we're playing cards, suffering through magnet chess matches (Rebecca swiftly kicked my butt today, it was awful), swimming, demolishing hordes of evil minions (aka gaming), watching DVDs on the laptop, listening to iPods and killing swarms of mosquitos from the doors being left open all day. A week from today we'll say hello from India. Until then we have a few more last minute visits with friends and I think the kids and I will go to AISL for lunch on Tuesday so we can say goodbye there.Oh, and we'll eat out. A lot. Tonight, it was dessert across the street at Les Nuits d'Orient as a surprise for the kids. Yum.Yeah, there are some things we're going to definitely miss.Funny note... when our gardener left today, he was wearing a t-shirt, with a long sleeved shirt over and an additional sweatshirt at the ready. The temperature is delicious but to the Togolese, August is downright frigid.

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The GlobeHoppers

For those wondering, Germany is 6 hours ahead of EDT.

We're a Foreign Service family currently posted to Frankfurt, Germany after having spent 2 years in Manila, Philippines, 1 year in Lome', Togo (no, not Tonga), 3 years in Chennai, India, 3 years in Virginia, and 4 years in Amman, Jordan. We'll spend 3 years in Germany to graduate the boys from high school, and our next post is TBD 2019!

I am a former Army brat (lived in Belgium, Zaire, Algeria, Niger, visited too many places to list), now Foreign Service spouse. I tag along where ever Ian takes us and try to keep the family sane. Between 1996 when we got married and 2003 when we moved to Manila we lived in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Florida, and visited several other states.

Rebecca traveled to Oman with chorus (2013), Ethiopia with Week Without Walls (WWW) 2014, Qatar with swimming (2014) and volleyball (2015), and Kuwait with basketball (2016). She also went to Amsterdam in 2017.

Rebecca and Nicholas traveled through Vietnam on WWW 2015 and Thailand for WWW 2016.

Katherine went to Kuwait with volleyball (2014) and France with WWW 2014, and did a semester abroad in Cork, Ireland in 2016. She's was in Dublin for her internship summer 2017.

Jonathon went to Kuwait with Academic Games (2015) and had a school trip to Berlin in 2016.

Ian has also been to Ethiopia (2006), Benin (2006), South Korea (2004), Liberia (2016), Central African Republic (2016), Cameroon (2016), Algeria (2017), Morocco (2017), Tunisia (2017), Turkmenistan (2017), and Suriname (2018). He also covers Sanaa and Tripoli (no travel there), Copenhagen and Accra. Ian aided after the Mumbai Massacre (2008), and also went to Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. A life goal for him is to serve in Russia or Canada, or really any place that has a decent hockey scene. He's happy that Frankfurt has the local Loewen team!